


Speak As You Find

by Lirillith



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 13:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7895137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/pseuds/Lirillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kotetsu tries to keep in touch during the year he's retired.  Somehow, he mostly ends up being in touch with Blue Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak As You Find

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).



> This fic took off in directions I never anticipated, at great length - but I hope you enjoy!

Kotetsu had been retired and moved back home with his family for all of a week when he finally caved to temptation.

He'd been watching Hero TV every time an episode came on — that wasn't something he was bothering to resist. But despite all the assurances, the email addresses and personal phone numbers and promises everyone had extracted from him at the farewell party, he'd been trying to keep from contacting anybody right away. He'd open up his phone, scroll through the contacts list, and sometimes, sure, he'd snap a photo of a drink or a meal and text it to Antonio. He'd managed to wheedle Muramasa into cracking open a bottle of nice Scotch, his first night back home. There was no way he wasn't going to gloat about _that_. But all the others, the ones he knew through being a hero first — he wasn't going to pester them.

He really wasn't. Even though he looked at the torii gate at the train station and thought _Origami would love to see this,_ even though he noticed the Chinese signs in town and thought of Dragon Kid, even though he noticed the Blue Rose poster in the window of a shop as his brother drove him to the house. Even though he'd been sending his partner cute pictures of rabbits every dang day since about a week after they met and had never stopped until now. He was going to stay in touch, sure, but he wasn't going to pester. 

So he waited a week before he sent Blue Rose the text, _You looked good out there tonight,_ and then he yelped and nearly dropped his phone when it almost immediately buzzed a reply. 

_So you ARE watching!_ she'd sent, and then immediately afterwards, _I always look good._

 _Well I can't argue with that,_ he replied. Not if he wanted to live. But also because it was the truth; she was a pretty girl, and looking good on camera was her job, too. _Not totally what I meant tho._

_So what did you mean?_

He'd meant that she'd been kicking ass, really — she'd done one of those big ice-hands of hers, snapping up three jewel thieves in one fistful of crook, and it was a lot easier to appreciate her style and efficiency when those weren't his and Barnaby's points getting yanked from under his nose. But that was a lot to peck out on a phone keyboard, so he just sent _Nice work on the triple arrest._

 _I'm putting Sky High on notice this season,_ she said, and then _Also trigonometry._

 _God I hope you don't want help with homework,_ he sent, and then _Good luck!_ She must have been moving on to studying or something, because she just sent him a thumbs-up emoji, and he flopped back onto the floor, pleased that she didn't seem to feel too pestered. 

It wasn't something that had ever worried him before. If anything, everybody always told him he meddled. But that was because he was right there, watching Blue Rose slack off on the heroics because she was moonlighting, watching Bunny not eat enough vegetables, hearing Dragon Kid grump about her parents. Now he was out in the boonies, a retired old man, and they were going about their lives without him. Who'd want to hear from him _now?_

 

But Blue Rose sure seemed to. She always responded to his texts, sometimes right away, and usually like she wanted to have a conversation. The others didn't, always — Dragon Kid liked his food photos, but she'd always just send a couple of emojis, and Origami would take forever but send him long and very polite messages — but he kept having _conversations_ with Blue Rose. It kind of surprised him. In person, it seemed like he couldn't go a day without pissing her off. 

So he kept in touch. That spring, when his mother dragged him to the garden center to do the heavy lifting for her, he slipped off to take pictures of roses and text them to her — some of them were actually kind of blue. Blue-ish. Well, more like purple. _Closest I could get_ , he finally admitted. 

_Close enough,_ she said, but a couple of weeks later, when he was at the flower shop getting a bouquet for his mother and one for Tomoe's grave for Mother's Day, he snapped a shot of actually-blue roses. _That's more like it_ , he said, not mentioning why he was at a florist's.

 _I think they use food coloring to get them that blue,_ she said, and he actually felt disappointed, like he'd screwed up somehow. _Have you seen the Applause roses?_ she asked. _The genetically engineered ones? They're kind of purple too._

So he had to ask the florist about them, and she showed him photos — he'd have to special order them, she explained, and he kind of choked on the price. He made up a long and awkward explanation about Kaede being a big fan of Blue Rose, and he had no idea if the lady was buying it, but she started telling him about some other rose called Blue Bayou, which he agreed looked pretty nice, and in the end he took half a dozen of them home with the other bouquets. 

At which point he realized he had no idea how to get them to Stern Bild (didn't you usually order that kind of thing delivered if you wanted to get them to someone far off?) And then he realized he was trying to figure out how to deliver roses to a girl who was like half his age, and he immediately pictured her calling him a creep. 

What he ended up doing was setting them up in a water glass in his room, and taking a picture to text to her. And also to put as the contact picture for her, in his phone. 

_Wow, you bought them?_ she replied. _I guess that's why you stopped answering_

 _Yeah, things got kind of out of hand,_ he replied, which made it sound like there'd been a brawl in the flower shop, or like he'd thrown a car or something. 

_Remember you don't have anyone to pay your damage fines anymore,_ she said, and he laughed, because clearly she was thinking the same thing. And he'd much rather have her laughing at the idea of him busting up a flower shop than thinking he was a dirty old man.

Because it wasn't like he meant anything creepy by it. It was just that roses were a popular flower, so he got reminded of her a lot. He ran into a lot more roses, day to day, than he did, like, dragons. Or buffalo. Or rabbits, though there were a fair number of bunnies around out in the country. And he liked talking to her. He missed making her smile, even when it was grudging chuckles at his dad jokes, but he liked talking to her and not pissing her off, and she actually seemed to like talking to him like this. 

 

So it was a disappointment but not really a surprise when he was back in Stern Bild, back in the First League, and she wouldn't give him the time of day anymore. She just liked him better as words on a screen, he figured. Out of her hair, not screwing up and getting things all wrong, messing up with Barnaby and tripping over his tongue around her and breaking buildings and putting train lines out of commission. 

But he was never able to leave well enough alone when someone was right there, in the break room, downing her sports drink in silence even though they were the only two people around and she hadn't even said hello when he came in. 

"Hey, Blue Rose," he said, and she jumped like he'd just given her a static shock. He wasn't even close to her.

"Tiger? What's—" She cleared her throat. "I guess I was zoned out!" she exclaimed, with an awkward laugh.

"You sure you weren't avoiding me? Because ever since I came back, it seems like you've been giving me the cold shoulder."

She gave him a long, steady look. She didn't even roll her eyes.

"Get it? Cold shoulder? Because—"

"I was hoping I could shame you into silence," she said, and he was the one to laugh, when he'd just been trying to get her to crack a smile, or at least a smirk. And to his delight, she started giggling too, even if it was probably just because he was laughing like a goon.

"Do you really think I'm avoiding you?" she asked, when he'd finally settled down a little.

"I kinda wondered if I should just text you instead."

She sort of turned pink, though he wasn't sure why. "I don't know why you stopped when you moved back to the city."

"I guess... I mostly use phones for talking on? At least here where the reception's good?" But he texted Bunny every day, even if it was just the cute bunny pics and Bunny never actually replied to them. "And you're not gonna want texts from me when you see my stupid face every day."

"I text Fire Emblem and Dragon Kid all the time! I text my _mom_ , and I live with her!" 

"Well, yeah..." He scratched at his beard uncertainly. Why had he even started texting? Was it because of the bad cellphone reception back home? Or because he'd felt like he'd annoy people less that way? Not that annoying people normally stopped him, at least not when he could see them getting annoyed, and try to laugh it off or make it better, or maybe just revel in annoying them, if by "them" he meant "Bunny." But he didn't like annoying Blue Rose. It felt too much like annoying Tomoe, in the bad way, not in the way he used to do in high school when he just wanted her to pay attention to him. 

"You stopped texting me, too," he said, suddenly realizing it. 

She got _more_ pink. "I figured, you know... That's not the point!"

"It's not?"

He wasn't totally sure what was the point. Had they done all that talking — well, texting — just because they weren't seeing each other every day, so she kept forgetting he was an annoying old dad-joke-making has-been, and he kept forgetting she was in high school? He wasn't totally sure that the recent cold shoulder — and come on, that was an awesome pun — was too different from how she'd acted before he'd retired. 

Then he noticed the towel around her neck, and without thinking, he said, "Hey, isn't that the towel I gave you way back when?"

She clapped her hands to her neck like she wanted to hide it. "What? No! Shut up!"

"No, that's totally the towel, right? I recognize that snake! I drew that snake back when I was a kid."

"You did?" Like she'd forgotten she'd ever denied it, she pulled the towel loose and spread it out. It looked pretty faded, like she'd been using it all this time, and he felt a touch of pride. 

"Yeah, back when I was in kindergarten or so. First grade. I don't remember. But I told my dad the liquor store needed a mascot like the school had, and that's what I came up with."

"That kind of explains why it looks like that," she said, but she sounded almost fond. "You never told me that before."

"Yeah, well..." He felt kind of dumb about it, honestly. It wasn't like it was a very good snake. Kaede's kindergarten drawings were a lot better. "What were we talking about?"

She folded up the towel briskly. "How I'm _not_ avoiding you," she said. "And how you need to get back to texting me like you used to, because I'm pretty busy applying to colleges and stuff right now on top of Hero work." 

"I don't see how distracting you from that is supposed to help," he said, then, "Hey, college? Dang, time sure flies. So you're like a senior now, right?"

"Yeah," she said. He wasn't sure if she'd stopped being pink and started again, or if she was just still pink. He wasn't sure why she'd be bashful about college, of all things. 

"That's good, though! My wife said she had a ton more free time in college than she ever did in high school. Maybe you'll finally get a chance to breathe once you're in college."

"More likely they'll just load up my Blue Rose schedule now that they can," she said. "I should go finish up my training so I can go on to the office."

"Sure thing," he said. "So I guess I'll, um... I guess I text you. Feels kinda weird, but if you say so."

"I do," she said firmly, and then she dashed out of the room like something was chasing her.

He stretched and leaned back in his seat. That was what he'd forgotten about, being here in person with her — half the time they talked he had no idea what had just happened. But he was supposed to text her, no question about that.

 

What surprised him was that she texted him, instead, that evening while he and Bunny were having dinner. He checked his phone, saw it, but didn't open it up to read the whole text. He stuck it back in his pocket without comment, but he felt twitchy and eager to get to it, the whole meal, and Bunny finally said, "If you need to answer that, go right ahead." 

"Nah," Kotetsu said, but a minute later he was swiping the screen. He could see Bunny's half-smile even as he focused on the words.

 _You know, I don't think you've ever mentioned your wife to me before._

_What? you sure?_ But he probably hadn't. He'd answered the questions, back when Antonio told everyone about Kaede; he'd answered a few questions of Bunny's, once in a while, and he'd been talking about her to Kaede, more often, as Kaede started looking more and more like her every day. _My bad_ , he added, though even he could tell she was really asking him to say more, to explain somehow or other. Then he set his phone to vibrate.

"Kaede?" Bunny asked, as he tucked the phone away. 

"Nah," Kotetsu said, then, "Blue Rose."

"Ah," Bunny said, just one little noise that wasn't even really a word, but there was just something about it. Kotetsu shoveled a big forkful of pasta in his mouth, but that "ah." 

"What?" he asked, finally, mouth full. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he tried to ignore it. 

"I'd been wondering if you two were back in touch."

"Back in touch?" Had he ever mentioned their texting to Bunny before? 

"While you were retired, she told me you were in contact with her. I think she was trying to make a point to me about contacting you."

Back when Bunny wasn't answering calls, or dignifying bunny photos and videos with a response, or much of anything else either. "So you were talking to her?"

"Oddly enough, yes. Once in a while."

Kotetsu felt a weird stab of something like jealousy. What the hell was that? He'd always thought the two of them would make a good pair, age difference aside. Was he annoyed that Bunny would talk to her, and not to him? But it was perfectly natural. They'd have a lot more in common. A lot closer in age, both celebrities, even when Bunny was trying to lay low — they made a lot of sense together. 

"Yeah," Kotetsu said, stalling to get his thoughts together. "Yeah, I sort of figured she was done with that once I was back in town being an annoying old fart where she could see, but I guess not." He laughed a bit, and focused on twirling more pasta around his fork. "Go figure, huh? Kids these days."

Bunny shrugged. "If you mean it's unusual anyone would want to hear from you, I think you're underselling yourself. I assume you're not harassing _her_ with VuTube videos."

"Hey, now, that's a _tradition_ ," Kotetsu protested, and Bunny smiled, and they were back to normal, and Kotetsu did his damnedest not to squirm or mess with his phone till he was in the kitchen, stacking the dishes in the sink.

What she'd asked, which he'd more or less known before he even looked at the screen, was _What was she like?_ And he waited till Bunny was off toward home — he had a morning show appearance tomorrow, so no drinking-and-movies tonight, or drinking-and-trying-to-teach-the-other-to-appreciate- _good_ -music-for-a-change — before he gave the message another read, and sighed, and finally sent her _That's kind of hard to fit into a text._

 _Would you talk about it out loud instead?_ she asked.

Well. He probably _could_. And it was just one little bloop of his phone to actually calling her, his heart pounding like he was sixteen again and calling Tomoe on the landline.

"Tiger?" Blue Rose's voice was high-pitched with surprise. "I wasn't expecting you to call that soon."

"I figured if I waited I'd just lose my nerve," he said, with a sort of half-laugh. Not too different from what she'd done earlier that day, at the training center, come to think of it. "I guess, y'know... I don't talk about her much, so it's kind of hard to do."

"You don't have to," she said quickly. "It was just... you mentioned her, and I wondered if maybe you were trying to talk about her more, and I got curious..."

"I guess I kind of am? Once I was back at home, I got nostalgic, and I found out Kaede likes to hear about her mom..."

"How old was Kaede, when—" She cut off, like she didn't want to actually say it.

"Four," he says, "Just like Bunny," and that was it, floodgates open. He told her about meeting Tomoe back in high school, "back when I was younger than you are now," about how she was always smarter than him, what a geek she was over heroes, how she picked out his hero name for him and helped him design a suit back when it was all just a pipe dream. How she'd kick his ass when he was moping or stuck on something but she always had his back when he was down. "You'd have liked her," he said. "Everybody liked her."

"She sounds great," Blue Rose said, quietly. 

"I guess I'm a little biased."

He heard a creak, like she was in bed. "I'm sorry if you'd rather not talk about her this much."

"Nah, it's like..." He was sitting on his bed, too, and he flopped back onto the mattress. "We were together half our lives, you know? That saying about your better half — she was my better half. It's hard to go around not talking about half of you, even if talking hurts." He hadn't meant to say _hurts_. He'd meant to say _sucks_ , meant to keep it a little impersonal, but he hadn't wanted her to feel like she was making him do something he hated. Because he didn't hate talking about Tomoe. Never had. 

But he'd picked the wrong word after all, because she said, in a small voice like a little kid who'd screwed up, "I'm sorry."

"No no no no! That's not what I meant at all!" He sat back up, determined to babble words at her till she wasn't sorry anymore. "I mean, I'm really glad you got me to talking! I bottle things up, everyone says that! It's like ripping off a bandaid or something!"

Her laugh sounded a little sleepy, and he wondered if he misread that small voice. "Okay, then I'm not sorry."

"Good," he said, and then he looked at the clock. "Jeez, it's after eleven. I must be boring you to sleep."

"Not boring me," she said, but she yawned. "I like hearing your voice."

"So just talking you to sleep," he said, trying to ignore that comment about his voice, which made him feel kind of odd in a good way. Then again, this whole conversation was doing that, one-sided as it was. 

"Yeah," she said, "a little bit. Sorry."

"I guess I could just keep talking," he said. "If it wouldn't kill your phone."

"Maybe I should put it back on the charger," she said. "Or at least hang up. You have better things to do than talk me to sleep."

"Not really," he said, but it was late, and he was way too old for her, and he didn't want some old guy talking Kaede to sleep or anything, so he said, "It's late," and left off the rest, and skipped to, "Good night, Blue Rose."

"You never call me by my real name," she said. 

"I never even call _Bunny_ by his real name," he countered.

It was nice to hear laughter in her voice as she said, "Good night, Tiger."

 

They went back to texting, after that, by mutual agreement. Photos of their lunches, stupid jokes (from him to her) or complaints about school (from her to him) — ordinary stuff, silly stuff, not the odd, quiet intimacy of that night. He didn't like that words like _intimacy_ were even coming into his head, and he did his damnedest to shoo them right back out again, but unfortunately that particular word fit. 

But it was just a word. He wasn't doing anything, and no one had to know if thoughts like _if I was twenty years younger_ found their way into his head sometimes. He shooed those out too. He wasn't twenty years younger. He was closer to forty than he was to her age. She was just a kid — he remembered being eighteen, twenty, feeling like he was all adult when he paid his first electric bill, and he knew how clueless he'd really been.

It wasn't quite the same for her. She'd been a hero since she was, what, fifteen? In some ways she had more in common with the older heroes than with kids her own age. But not every way. There was no mistake about that. 

It was kind of interesting that she was talking about school to him, once in a while, mentioning stuff that happened in her classes or things her teachers said. She never used to do that; it was like she used to want him to forget she was in high school. But now she was nearly out of it.

He was old — well, old _er_ — and time seemed to fly past for him now, in a way it never had when he was her age. She was graduating in no time at all, and it was okay to send flowers and presents to people doing things like graduating, so he found himself a Stern Bild florist, the kind of fancy florist people hired for fancy weddings in the city, and he poked around their website getting intimidated. 

So he just drove there, and stumbled through his explanation of what he was after. He asked about Applause roses, and those others, Blue Lagoon? Blue Bayou, wondering all the while if they recognized him from when he got unmasked and guessed what was up. And he paid an amount that made his teeth hurt a bit for an arrangement to be delivered to the training center, so that probably confirmed their suspicions if they had any. 

They asked him if he wanted to include a personal message with the arrangement, and he confirmed their imagined suspicions some more by asking if he could make sure it was sealed before he wrote out the card, and they assured him he could.

So he hunched over the end of the counter, frowning at the card while the cashier handled the next customer, and he finally wrote _Congratulations, Karina!_ on the card, and signed it _Kotetsu T. Kaburagi_ , with a little doodle of a tiger that he'd perfected for his Wild Tiger autograph. He sealed it into the envelope, and handed it to the lady behind the counter without really making eye contact. 

He hoped Karina would be willing to wait, like, five or ten years before he actually said that name out loud. 


End file.
